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X Games coming to Austin in 2014

KVUE -- The Summer X Games are coming to Austin in 2014. More than a dozen cities fought for the opportunity. Austin made it to the final four. Detroit, Chicago and Charlotte were also being considered.

Wednesday morning ESPN announced it had chosen Austin. The first event will take place May 15-18, 2014. The games will be held in the city through 2017 at Circuit of the Americas.

"First of all, Austin as a city has done a terrific job over the last several years embracing big events," Scott Guglielmino, ESPN's senior vice president for programming and Global X, said. "Music, obviously, is a big piece of that, and they have a very active community and city. The other piece of it was when we got on the ground in Austin and met Bobby [Epstein, COTA's chairman and founding partner] and his group and saw the facility, it felt right very quickly. They shared a vision in terms of growing out this event."

Over the past month people have been pushing to get the games to come to Austin. When ESPN judges visited in June, they were treated to a party downtown. People rallied at the State Capitol hoping to capture the judges' attention.

"The X Games celebrate fitness, courage and individuality — traits greatly valued by our community — and we look forward to showing the world all of the wonderful things Austin has to offer," Mayor Lee Leffingwell said.